Apps & Consumer
Walmart opens the door to AI shopping agents as Amazon shuts them out
Walmart is launching an Agent Gateway and new AI-agent shopping controls, building on its Meta Muse deal just as rival Amazon starts blocking AI agents from buying for shoppers.
Walmart announced Wednesday that it’s building out agentic commerce rather than closing the door on it, rolling out an Agent Gateway and a set of controls for shoppers who let AI agents buy on their behalf. The move comes shortly after Amazon began blocking AI agents from completing purchases for customers, and it sets Walmart apart from travel and booking sites that have locked agents out entirely.
Walmart already works with Meta’s Muse and plugs into AI apps like ChatGPT and Gemini. CEO John Furner, speaking at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, said the retailer is adding more infrastructure to get ready for a future where AI agents shop at scale, across both Walmart and Sam’s Club.
The centerpiece is the Agent Gateway, a new MCP server built on the Model Context Protocol that Anthropic originally created, which lets approved agents search Walmart’s inventory and buy on a user’s behalf without that user handing personal data or purchase history straight to the agent. Walmart also built tooling to tell an agent’s purchases apart from a shopper’s own, and to give shoppers more say over what their agents can do.
That control arrives through Agent Profiles, rolling out next month: shoppers link each AI agent to a dedicated profile in their account, see its purchases separately from their own, and choose whether every transaction needs approval or a set spending limit — similar, Walmart says, to adding a person as an authorized credit-card user. A profile is created the first time a shopper uses an agent through the Gateway, can be deleted anytime, and works for any Walmart account holder — no Walmart+ required.
Walmart is also writing specific terms for agents: they can’t act beyond the shopper’s intent, can’t touch payment details, and see only the data a task needs, or they’re cut off from the site. Walmart’s normal returns policy still applies even when an agent gets something wrong.
Why it matters
Walmart is betting that treating AI agents as a new, controllable kind of customer — not a threat to lock out — will win over shoppers who are still wary of letting software spend their money.